July 15, 2017

The unflagging tedium of the Trump-Russia-Manafort-Guccifer 2.0-Kushner-Page-Comey-Flynn-Steele-Stone-Lavrov-Mueller-WikiLeaks-Fancy Bear-­Intercept-CIA-FBI-NSA-BBC-Don Jr. saga refuses to go away. Every day there are new breathless reports, fresh for-initiates-only micro-revelations that inspire screeches of “Treason!”

But there is still no smoking gun. . . .

This is hardly the first This is it moment the media has begged us to acknowledge. Please remember that a year ago we were expected to believe that Donald Trump had committed treason by begging the Russian government to hack Hillary Clinton’s emails live on cable television, before an audience of millions. We all know that this is exactly how espionage works and that there is no way that the smiling ex-reality television show host was making a joke about the actual documented collusion between the former secretary of state’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee, which marshaled their forces against an honest public servant who could arguably have beaten Trump in a general election if the primary had not been rigged.

And so it has continued, uninterrupted without so much as a hint of self-reproach or critical reflection, and so it will continue, presumably, “from day to day / To the last syllable of recorded time,” in saecula saeculorum.